The pain of password complexity

Did you know that there is a method to the madness of password complexity required by most organizations?
Here is why you are required to create a password consisting of lowercase, uppercase, numbers, and special characters, and usually a minimum password length
of eight characters (although 10 is preferable):
There are 26 lowercase letters, 26 uppercase letters, 10 numbers, and 32 special characters. These combined make up a key space. This key space can be calculated
based on the following formula: C^N where C is the number of possible characters used and N is the password length. So, let's say that you use a password
that only consists of 6 characters and they are all lowercase. This means that there are 26^6 possibilities. This equates to 308 million possibilities. Changing
your password to 10 characters raises this value dramatically to 26^10, which is also 141 trillion possibilities. An important note here is that although a
10 character password (all in lowercase) may look pretty darn secure, there are password cracking software tools available that can iterate through 2.8 billion
password combinations in just one second. This means that it would take a tool like this only about 13 hours to crack a 10 character lowercase password.

Now, let's say that you use a combination of the four variants (lowercase, uppercase, numbers, and special characters). This means that you are using 94 possible
values (26+26+10+32). A password such as this is also known as a complex password. We will also use the six and 10 character length as examples. A complex
password consisting of just six characters (94^6) equals 689 billion possibilities. In contrast, a complex password that consists of 10 characters (94^10) equals
53 quintillion. To recap on what this means, the order is million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, and then quintillion. What this boils down to is that a
complex password consisting of 10 characters will take years to crack!

References
Darril Gibson, (2011). CompTIA Security+

Complex passwords can be a pain; however, perhaps this will allow you to understand the reasons behind the madness. It really is to ensure that you are and stay
secure in a digital world.

Soft Inclinations: eDOCS DM Server Log Parser - Part 1: Understanding...

Soft Inclinations: eDOCS DM Server Log Parser - Part 1: Understanding...: A good thing about eDOCS DM is that DM Server can create log files, which give you idea of what is going on behind the scene.

HTML/XHTML/HTML5/XML

   Some years ago (about 13 or 14) I coded a website (and have of course coded others since then) and stored it on Geocities (no longer around). I did this in XHTML because that was the new HTML standard. The idea (or so I thought) behind XHTML was to transition web documents from HTML which supports sloppy markup to XML documents (which must be written as a well-formed document). Making the transition to XML would essentially be a move to creating intelligent documents as documents are self-describing. This in turn would empower Internet searching to be more exact in search results and also reduce Internet traffic. The ultimate idea was to create what is now coined as the "Semantic Web".

   Then along comes HTML5. HTML5 contains self-describing tags such as <element>, <footer>, <article>, etc. The questions that present themselves are; with the introduction of HTML5, have we abandoned the move to XML? Will we continue to release new HTML standards? Why did we need HTML5 in the first place? What is the primary goal of HTML5? Is it to push the Semantic Web? If so, doesn't XML do that already, and do it better? Is it the push to remove the need for plugins such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight? If this is the primary goal then I can understand.

   Don't get me wrong, I understand the need for HTML. If you need non-persistent information then HTML is the way to go; however, for persistent data that can be shared easily with others, isn't XML the proper choice? Will the web ever make the move to XML (with the caveat that HTML can be easily created using XSLT)?

Web Design

By its nature, the Internet is transactional

Aside from customer or design requirements, you should only consider using
multimedia on a site when it has either no effect or a positive effect on the usability of the site.

The Web strategy is not to build the best looking or most useful Web site. The basic strategy of a business Web site is to attract and retain customers.

Web site specifications can be divided into four types:
• Functionality specifications • Content specifications • Architecture specifications • Design specifications

http://www.adobe.com/resources/techniques/

Web Site Usability:
The first element of Web site usability is high-quality content.
The second element of Web site usability is easy navigation.
The third element of Web site usability is information architecture.
 The fourth element of Web site usability is search capability.
The fifth element of Web site usability is relevant services.

When designing your Web sites, remember the following practices:
• Determine users' goals and needs.
• Learn from navigation that works
• Go deeper than the home page.
• Provide quick links.
• Design for various user preferences.

Stock Photos:
• Jupiter Images (www.jupiterimages.com)
• Getty Images (http://gettyimages.com)
• Shutterstock Images (www.shutterstock.com)

Microstock Photos:
www.istockphoto.com

Free Photos:
• FreeStockPhotos.com (www.freestockphotos.com)
• FreeImages.co.uk (www.freeimages.co.uk/)
• Freepixels (www.freepixels.com)

Popular photosharing sites include the following:
• dotPhoto (www.dotphoto.com/)
• Webshots (www.webshots.com/)
• Fotki (www.fotki.com/us/en/)
• Flickr (www.flickr.com)
• SmugMug (www.smugmug.com)
• Picasa (http://picasa.google.com)
• Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com)

Many digital cameras record metadata in exchangeable
image file format (EXIF)

The term "pixel" is short for "picture element."

The most common graphic format is raster, also known as bitmap. Raster graphics use
small dots to create images and colors. Raster graphics include the JPEG, GIF and PNG
formats.

Vector graphics store the information about the image in mathematical instructions that are
then interpreted and displayed.

Vector graphics are
best suited for line art, shapes and illustrations.

If you want to develop your own graphics, vector-based drawing applications commonly
used in the industry include the following:
• Adobe Illustrator CS5
• Adobe FreeHand MX
• CorelDRAW X5
• Inkscape
• Adobe Fireworks CS5

If you want to develop your own graphics, paint-type applications commonly used in the
industry include the following:
• Adobe PhotoShop CS5
• Microsoft Image Composer
• Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3
• Adobe Fireworks CS5

Only GIF and JPEG are natively supported by all browsers; other file formats can be
viewed with the aid of a plug-in. Native support means that the browser does not require
any special software or plug-in to display the image. When creating Web graphics,
designers must choose between GIF and JPEG based on the type of images they want.

Scalable Vector Graphics:
For more information about SVG, you can visit the following URLs:
• www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG
• www.mozilla.org/projects/svg/

The following services provide online image optimization:
• GIFBot from NetMechanic — www.netmechanic.com/products/accelerate.shtml
• SiteScan from OptiView — www.optiview.com/

The following services provide desktop image optimization:
• DeBabelizer Pro from Equilibrium —
www.debabelizer.com/Internet/Equil/Products/DeBabelizer/index.html
• Ulead SmartSaver Pro from Corel — www.ulead.com/ssp/
• GIFCruncher from Spinwave.com — www.webreference.com/services/graphics/gc/

You can find a list of common and equivalent fonts for both Windows and Macs at www.ampsoft.net/webdesignl/
WindowsMacFonts.html.

Public Domain images, ebooks, and music:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_image_resources
www.publicdomain4u.com
www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page